Apple

TMCnet contributor Gary Kim has an excellent article about AT&T asking the Federal Communications Commission to create a timetable to shutdown the analog PSTN phone system in the United States. AT&T explains that maintaining two networks - IP and PSTN is retarding the deployment of the newer broadband IP network.

Ok, I'll grant you that one AT&T. It doesn't make much sense for you to have to maintain IP networks and PSTN networks - especially when voice competitors like Vonage and Packet8 leverage your IP infrastructure to offer broadband VoIP with no cost to them. Doesn't seem fair does it?

There was a bit of controversy surrounding the cool Dragon Dictation speech-recognition app for the Apple iPhone. Namely, some privacy advocates weren't happy that the app would upload their entire iPhone contact list to Dragon Dictation's servers. The purpose was merely to improve name recognition and no personally identifiable information such as phone number or email address was uploaded. Nevertheless, it caused a bit of a firestorm among privacy advocates.

Nuance Dragon Dictation for iPhone is the most amazing text-to-speech application you will find on the iPhone. Employing a client-server architecture along with the iPhone's superb high-quality microphone means near dead-on accuracy. When you click the record button your voice is temporarily stored locally on the iPhone. When you are finished recording or reach the 30s maximum time, the recording is uploaded to Nuance's servers.

Nimbuzz today launched their social networking, IM, and VoIP app for the Blackberry. Although it doesn't support VoIP. It works on multiple IM networks including Skype IM as well as online chat support for MSN, GoogleTalk, Yahoo!, Facebook & MySpace.

Running as a native application it allows Nimbuzz to run constantly in the background, have alert notifications 'pushed' to the home screen and integrate notifications with sound profiles, ensuring you don't miss a message.

Nimbuzz claims this is "the most comprehensive mobile social messaging application available for the Blackberry."

The iLive ISP209B is not your typical alarm clock - it's a portable iPod and iPhone docking station with built in speakers and dual alarm function that you can stuff in your travel bag and be sure to be woken up with your favorite tunes. Not only does it playback your iPhone/iPod music for its dual alarms, but it also simultaneously charges your iPhone or iPod. No more waking up in the morning to realize you left your WiFi, 3G, and Bluetooth radio on, thus sucking your iPhone's battery completely dry. Trust me, I know, I've done it.

Nimbuzz, has entered the PSTN termination business with the announcement today of NimbuzzOut. I use Nimbuzz on my iPhone because it's a great aggregator of various VoIP, IM, and social services, including Skype, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, Google Talk (Orkut), AIM, Facebook, MySpace and more. Nimbuzz had been leveraging other networks such as Skype for voice, but this marks the first time Nimbuzz offers their own termination. Finally, a business revenue-generating model??

NimbuzzOut Credits will be available for purchase at www.nimbuzzout.com, and is available on Symbian, iPhone and iPod Touch handsets and rolling out to others later this year.

Nimbuzz claims, "more than 10 million registrations of the application since launch, a current growth rate of more than a million new registrations each month (that's a new Nimbuzz user every 3 seconds!), a daily active user base of over 30% and an international user footprint covering every corner of the globe."

Nimbuzz founder & CEO, Evert-Jaap Lugt said of the NimbuzzOut launch: "High value, high quality voice calling is positioned at the heart of our value proposition, making NimbuzzOut the most natural commercial extension of our product. This offers fantastic value to our users, especially those who wish to communicate regularly with friends and family abroad at the lowest possible prices. This is all part of our strategy to give Nimbuzz users control of their mobile lives and the freedom they want and deserve."

A fascinating if not predictable report from AdMob was just released yesterday showing explosive mobile phone web surfing growth. In their September 2009 AdMob Mobile Metrics Report AdMob received more than 100 million ad requests from 14 countries, and more than 10 million ad requests from 64 countries. This data was collected using AdMob's network of more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications. Of course, just about everyone is now using their mobile phone to check email, surf the web, tweet via Twitter, check their Facebook, update their statuses, etc.